Proto-Population Control in British India: Quantifying Gendered Mortality Governance through Reproductive-Age Life Tables, 1881 – 1961

Edwin E. Thomas, Department of Gender and Women's Studies, University of Wisconsin - Madison

India, under colonial rule, had some of the earliest recorded censuses in Global South history. From 1871-72 until 1941, decadal censuses have recorded the advent of modernist colonial advancements, size, population, density, famines, caste- and religion-based practices as well as concerns of both under- and over-population – all in a colonial attempt to understand post-1857 India. A major feature of these censuses are the demographic life tables that chart age-wise life expectancy figures, both at regional and national levels, yet feminist analyses of Indian history has largely overlooked analyzing life tables as a mode of biopolitical technology. My paper attempts to locate how mortality in the 20th century was differentiated by gender and shaped by population control concerns, specifically targeting women in their reproductive ages (15-49). Using Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, extending Michel Foucault’s concept of biopower, wherein state sovereignty is used to expose specific populations to death, I employ a mixed-methods methodology consisting of life table analyses from 1881-1961 and select qualitative analysis of census reports. Life table analyses reveal an increase in female-to-male reproductive age mortality burden from 1881 to 1961 (0.89 to 1.24), and the probability of dying peaking at 0.581 for women in their reproductive ages in 1911. Difference-in-differences analysis shows female reproductive-age mortality worsening consistently faster than male mortality with DiD values of +0.025, +0.026, and +0.013 per decade from 1881 to 1911 even while women retained lower absolute mortality. Kitagawa decomposition demonstrates that over 88% of pre-1911 deterioration is attributable to composition effects concentrated in the 15-20 age group. This indicates that colonial reproductive governance operated through chronic structural attrition of female survival rather than episodic mortality crises. I conclude with how this logic of mortality extends to postcolonial Indian family planning and why demography needs to be central to unpacking reproductive agency.

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 Presented in Session 59. Reproduction, Population, and the Modern State in South and East Asia